Eight Stories from a Military Base by ELLEN NESSUNO Siobhan Fallon’s slim volume “You Know When the Men Are Gone” is comprised of eight short stories based on life on a military base, in this case Fort Hood, Texas. Fallon is the wife of an Army major and she lived at Fort Hood during her husband’s two deployments to Iraq. Her stories, while fictional, are windows into a world that is rarely viewed. She paints a clear picture, immediately drawing one in. Her characters’ speech and actions are authentic, unadorned. If you have never been on a huge military base, this will give you the feel of such a place. If you have been there, you will recognize it. Some of the stories are about the female spouse’s experiences while the husband is deployed and also about his return. Fallon narrates these women’s days trying to hold families together, struggling with the distressed children of absent fathers, and sleepless nights alone with newborns or alone with worry, the fear of losing husbands through death in combat or to female soldiers with whom they are deployed. There are stories about returning combat vets – both those who yearn to return to normality and the emotional security of their marriages, and those who return physically but are so traumatized they cannot return emotionally. Fallon depicts the bewildering and frightening experience of longing for the return of someone deeply known and loved, but who is now a sometimes irrational and scary stranger, or utterly shut down and remote. She tells of loss – of the widow and the vet who lost his sergeant. Fallon does not make military wives saints. They vent frustration and anger on their veteran spouses, they can betray or desert them. Yet others are able to find moments and places of contact, ways to open the door to compassion, a new understanding, and healing. Marriages survive or they fail. There is no analysis here, rather a simple telling of tales leaving the reader to judge – should one choose to judge.